


I have seen the rain

by AngelaChristian



Category: The A-Team
Genre: Angst, Gen, Other, Rape, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-30
Updated: 2011-07-30
Packaged: 2017-10-21 23:25:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/231029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngelaChristian/pseuds/AngelaChristian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summary : Susan, a new nurse at the V.A., wants to find out more about<br/>Murdock and the reasons, why he´s living in the V.A. at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I have seen the rain

**Author's Note:**

> "I have seen the rain" is a song by P!nk

I have seen the rain

Header   
Title : I have seen the rain   
Genre: tragedy, angst, flashback to Vietnam era  
Characters: Murdock, Hannibal, Face, B.A., Susan  
Rating: M (16+)  
Warning : war crimes, sexual abuse   
Disclaimer :"The A-team" belongs to S. Carnell,   
I don´t make money with this.  
Note: reference to the Song "I have seen the rain" by Pink

 

Summary : Susan, a new nurse at the V.A., wants to find out more about   
Murdock and the reasons, why he´s living in the V.A. at all.

 

Part 1   
Today was Susan Taylor´s first day at the Veteran Asylum, a psychiatric hospital for former soldiers. She already had had a look at the files of some of patients, so she was familiar with those cases. Now she was waiting for the matron to show her the ward. The matron was a about fifty year old woman, who wore her grey hair in a tight knot.

 

She looked the new nurse over with disdain. “Miss Taylor, please follow me and listen carefully, I don´t like to repeat myself .”  
Susan suppressed an urge to stand to attention and salute. Then she obediently followed her through the sterile corridor until the matron stopped in front of a door.

“This is the room of Mr. H.M. Murdock , he calls himself “Howling Mad”, but his real name is written down somewhere in his file.”   
“It´s Henry Marcus,” Susan added.   
The matron lifted her eyebrow in acknowledgement. “I see you have done your homework.”  
She knocked at the grid of the door.”Mr. Murdock ?”  
A terrified scream came from inside. “The invasion of the extraterrestrials has begun !!! Run for your lifes !!!”  
The matron opened the door just a bit. “Murdock ?”   
“I´m firing all my torpedos and phasers !”   
A splash of water hit them when entering the room. Murdock was crouching behind his bed and a pile of pillows that looked like an improvised barricade, shooting at them with his water pistol.

 

He wore a self made cellophane triangle hat in order to keep the aliens from reading his mind.   
“Mr. Murdock, may I introduce you to our new nurse , Susan Taylor ?”   
Murdock popped up behind his pile of pillows. “Greetings from outer space, ma cherie !”  
He theatrically raised his hat and smiled.   
Susan giggled. “Hello Mr. Murdock , nice to meet you.”  
Murdock had a closer look at her; the new nurse was very attractive, slim, tall, long, blonde hair…the kind of woman that would date Face, but never a nut cake like him. He would never be more than a patient to her, how frustrating.  
“Nice to have met you, bye, Mr. Murdock,” she said and left the room together with the matron.  
“What exactly is wrong with Mr. Murdock, he just seems to be fooling around ?” She had read the diagnosis in his file and therefore expected worse than that.  
The older woman frowned.

 

“The difference between Murdock and someone just fooling around is, that he believes in what he does. He thinks his imaginary dog, Billy, is real like any other phantasm, he likes to talk about. He isn´t able to care for himself, he´s like a big child in a way. Sometimes he runs away with one of his former mates from Nam, but he always returns after a while. That guy often disguises himself, thinking we don´t get it, it seems to be a kind of game for Murdock, or that guy is as crazy as he is. I don´t know what they do, maybe they just go to the nearest pub to drink a beer and talk about old times. But I never saw relatives visiting him.”

Susan nodded. “How can I get more information about him, his files says that he was a pilot in Vietnam who´s been living here since the end of war.”

“I don´t know more than that file says, but maybe you can talk to that friend of his.”

 

Part 2  
After a while Murdock and Susan became friends, if friendship was possible between a patient and a nurse. He told her a lot of stories about the A-team and their fantastic assignments , which Susan liked to hear but never considered to be real. On a warm spring day both were sitting on a bench in the hospital park. The trees were in bloom and you could already sense the summer in the air.   
“Tell me , where do you get all those ideas from, I mean, the A-team and this stories you keep telling me ?”   
“You think, I´m just another freak, but I thought you really do believe me.” He seemed hurt and disappointed.  
“Murdock…” She looked at him with sympathy. “I´d really like to believe you, but nothing indicates that, for example, those people you mentioned, don´t just exist in your head.”  
“ Sure Face exists and he´s going to visit me soon, then you can check whether he´s real or not,” he snapped.

Two weeks later, Murdock was indeed visited by a man, matching his descriptions.  
Susan was putting clean sheets on his bed when the stranger entered his room.  
“Hey, Face !”, he called “That´s Susan, I told you about her on the phone, she´s our new nurse and you should really meet her !”   
She looked up to this very handsome man, who couldn´t have been a product of Murdock´s imagination, except for her starting to see ghosts, too.   
“Hello Mr….”   
“Peck, Tempelton, Peck.” He shoke her hand.”Oh, well, if all the nurses here were as pretty as you, I wouldn´t want to be sane anymore,” he flirted.  
Murdock gave him a warning and jealous look, which Susan didn´t notice. Face understood.  
“Mr. Murdock, I got to go, have a nice time with your friend.”

When Face left Murdock´s room, Susan followed him.  
“Please wait for a moment, Mr. Peck, I´d like to ask you a question.”   
“Go ahead.”  
“Do you happen to know something about Murdock´s family or what happened to him during the war ?”  
Face hesitated for a moment, not knowing how much he could tell her.  
“Well, I met him for the first time back in Nam, we served under Colonel John Smith on a special unite called “the A-team”, but he never told me anything about his family.”   
“The A-team exists ?! I thought Murdock made it up like this Colonel Decker who´s chasing him…”  
“Oh, that´s a long story, but why don´t you come with me and meet the A-team in person ?”  
“You´re lucky, my lunch break starts in five minutes.”

She followed Face two streets down until he stopped in front of a parked dark van with a red eye catching red stripe on it. He opened the sideward door. “May I introduce you to the A-team; the one with the cigar is the Colonel, we call him Hannibal, the one behind the wheel is B.A. And this is Susan, a nurse from the VA and a friend of Murdock´s.”  
Susan looked at them with disbelieve. “I thought you were just something existing in his imagination.”   
“Hey, man, I´m real, I ain´t nothing that, that fool made up, man !,” B.A. grumbled.  
Hannibal smiled and put his cigar non calando into the corner of his mouth.  
“Why don´t you get in ?”  
She hesitated, looking at the men.  
“Don´t be afraid, they are more harmless than they look,” encouraged Face.

 

Finally she climbed into the van. “So you are his fellows from Vietnam ? I´ve been wondering for a while about what happened to Murdock during the war, that turned him into what he´s now. I thought, maybe you as his friends, could tell me anything to make me understand him better ?”

 

Hannibal slowly exhaled the smoke. “You wanna know, why he´s the way he is now…”, he said pensively “I think I know the reason, but it isn´t a pretty story, lady, I tell you, but it´ll answer your question, so if you wanna hear it, here we go. It goes back to one hot summer day in Vietnam….”

 

Part 3  
The convoy, which was transporting supplies to a village, was going slowly up the narrow and steep streets through the Asian jungle. Colonel John Smith, nicknamed Hannibal after the famous strategic genius, cursed the jungle, the heat and the dust. He hated being there, but that wouldn´t keep him from accomplishing his mission.

Captain Murdock was sitting next to him, driving the small army truck and humming along the exotic music coming from the radio. The rough drive through holes and over stones didn´t seem to interfere with his good mood. Fortunately, this assignment promised to be more relaxing than the dangerous search and destroy missions or risky special operations, he and his team usual did.

Lieutenant Peck and Sergeant Baracus were in the truck driving behind him, followed by a jeep.  
Hannibal opened the window in order to let the cooling wind blow into his face and took a cigar from his pocket. This was much better, sometimes life could be pleasant even in the middle of a war. He smiled. The Captain´s good mood was contagious.

 

Now, Murdock had stopped humming. The Colonel watched him; he was a still young officer in his mid twenties and despite his youth known as an extraordinary pilot. Hannibal could see it on the missions, when he flew them to their engagements. He might be a little crazy , but which sane person would volunteer to join the Green Berets and go to Vietnam ? Cheerfully he blew the smoke into the sultry afternoon air.

Murdock watched him from the corner of his eye. The Colonel was smiling in his typical impish way. He hadn´t known him for a long time, but had the feeling, that his CO was a trustworthy , experienced man, sure Hannibal could feel that.

In a distance they could see some cabins.   
“Colonel, we´re going to be there in two minutes.”  
Murdock slowed the truck down and drove into the village. The people were expecting them, women and children came out of the cabins, looking curiously at the foreign soldiers.

 

Hannibal got out of the truck first, when suddenly the shooting started. He threw himself flat on the ground and took cover behind the truck. This was an ambush and they stepped right into it. Face and B.A. returned the fire, but there was no hope for the civilians. From a close distance Hannibal could watch a young woman being shot into the head, splashes of blood stained his uniform. Next to her a child broke down after taking a lethal hit. He tried to concentrate on the approaching enemy soldiers.

 

Murdock instinctively had thrown himself on the seat when the shooting started, now he was firing trough the open window at the jungle from where the Vietcong attacked.  
The windshield of the truck took a hit and shattered, spraying a rain of glass splinters all over Murdock. The bullet supposed to kill the Captain missed him for just an inch hitting the seat.

Face took position behind the open door of the jeep firing MG-volleys at their uninvited guests. Hannibal moved towards the jeep in order to support him.  
The tactical situation was critical, they were outnumbered by the enemy soldiers closing in. They couldn´t take on a whole platoon all by themselves and soon they would run out of ammunition. Another problem was the protection of the surviving civilians hiding in the cabins.

 

He was trying to get a better picture of the situation, aguishly thinking about a plan to save his men. Bauer seemed to be dead, he was laying motionless on the ground, Anderson got an injury at his leg, he wouldn´t make it. Face and B.A. were fine, holding their ground.  
But this couldn´t last for long, the enemy had encircled them, coming closer and closer.

 

The A-team was trapped. Some soldiers came out of the jungle, pointing their guns at Face and B.A., who slowly raised their hands and so did Murdock.  
“Hannibal watch out !” Face suddenly yelled.

 

The Colonel heard footsteps behind him. He turned around in a fast movement in order to grab the soldier sneaking up at him, but was hit hard on the temple by a rifle butt instead.  
He unconsciously sank to the ground.

 

When Hannibal came to with terrible headaches, he was looking into a barrel of a machine gun.  
“Don´t move, Mister !”, said the Vietcong soldier with a foreign accent in English.  
Hannibal stayed in his uncomfortable position with his hands and feet being tied up.  
“What about my men ?”, he mumbled dazed.  
The soldier just laughed and kicked his rip. Hannibal tried to ignore the pain.  
“Mistreating helpless people seems to be a hobby of yours, isn´t it ?”  
He smiled at him in a cocky way, which made the soldier kick him again.   
This time he couldn´t avoid sighing in pain.  
“Shut up ! or I´ll stuff your mouth, Colonel.” He put a disdainful emphasis on his rank.  
“You mean “Shut up , Sir”, I still outrank you,” Hannibal teased.

But this was just the outside, a mask he wore that nobody could see behind. Inside he was trembling with fear but his innate acting talent helped him to appear more brave then he actually was.

The leader of the Vietcong gestured to his men standing next to him and yelled some orders in his mother tongue. Hannibal was grabbed and pulled to his feet by two of them.

 

“You will stop smiling soon.”, the soldier hissed into his ear.  
Then he was dragged towards one of the straw cabins. Hannibal fought against a wave of nausea when he was brought into an upright position, he still hadn´t recovered from that blow he took. The next shock was waiting for him in the almost dark cabin.

Hannibal cleared his throat. It seemed as if talking was suddenly difficult for him.  
“What I´ll tell you now isn´t easy to take. Don´t think that I wasn´t shocked, I….just concealed it better. Yes, I feared for me and you to die on that day in the jungle when I heard the shots.”  
Face interrupted him. “I saw what happened…ehm…not actually saw, but heard it. I never talked about it before.”

Face had lost any idea about time when he came to. For a part of a second, he was close to panic, because he couldn´t see anything despite him feeling the hot sun burning on his naked arms. Then he realized that he had been blindfold with a black piece of cloth.

Face rubbed his head over the ground in order to remove it; his hands and feet were tied up. Now he could see a small bit of his environment, but not enough to get a clear orientation.  
He heard footsteps, a woman screaming, soldiers shouting orders, a little child started crying then shooting and more screaming and yelling. The charivari continued and the shots weren´t far away from him.

Face tried to lay absolutely still in order to avoid catching their attention.  
Sweat was running down his forehead. Where was the rest of his team ? He listened closely, hoping to make out their voices in that noise. Were they still alive ? He was close to panic again, had they been shot all ready , was he going to be next ? Someone was coming closer, he could sense it. His heart started beating faster and he barely could lay still. Suddenly Face heard someone screaming with pain, he recognized it was Murdock.

“Inside the cabin, I had to face something terrible, “ Hannibal continued “I still remember it when I see bamboo furniture or straw mats, I hate that stuff like hell…”  
Hannibal´s eyes recognized Murdock in the semidarkness. The walls made of strew didn´t let much light get into the cabin, but it really seemed to be dusk outside.  
He was crouching in a corner with his uniform torn. The hair was hanging disheveled into his face, his eye was swollen and his lips were burst  
Hannibal could see the bruised skin where the clothes were ripped.   
“Are you ok, Murdock ?”, he whispered, although he could see he was not.  
The Pilot weakly nodded.  
“Colonel, where are the others ?”  
“I know I´ll find a way to get us out of here… I..”

 

One of the soldiers dragged him away from Murdock and pushed him on a chair. Then he tied him to it, while the other soldier was pointing a gun at him.  
“Enough talking”, he barked.  
Two more soldiers entered the cabin. They grabbed frightened Murdock and pushed him to the ground. One of them took out a knife and cut off parts from his uniform.

 

Hannibal knew what was going to happen next and turned his head away, but the soldier pushed it back in order to make him watch.  
“You´ll watch, we do it just for you.”

 

He felt the cool metal of the gun pressed against his neck and swallowed the sarcastic remark. Then he was forced to watch with a mixture of disgust and fascination the terrible things, they did to the young pilot.  
Murdock screamed and cried.

 

He just couldn´t watch this without doing something. His fingertips reached for the ropes trying to find a way to loosen them at least a little. But the bigger problem was the gun pointed at him, otherwise he would have gotten up and started to fight.

 

No doubt they wouldn´t hesitate to pull the trigger, if he moved. Maybe Face and B.A. were already dead. He felt sympathy for Murdock, who had to endure this just because he couldn´t protect him. It made him so angry. If only he could`t help him somehow…

 

“Murdock, you´ll get through this , everything will be fine, I promise, I´ll take you back home…we´ll leave the army after this shit is over and start a new life in L.A., we could even leave the army and found an organization to work freelance…” he just babbled something hoping that the sound of his voice might give him strength. The soldiers didn´t seem to understand him, because they let him talk and didn´t show any reaction.

 

Murdock cried and whimpered, so he was still alive.  
The Colonel was sure that they would be killed as well, there was no reason to let them live after they became witnesses of the massacre and they were enemy soldiers, that was what the rational part of his mind told him.

“Only a miracle would have saved us..” , Hannibal closed.  
“But the miracle was already on its way…”, Face continued. “I was grabbed by some soldiers and…”

Face felt that a couple of hands grabbed him and pulled him up, then he was lived and carried away. He couldn´t tell because of the blind fold, but it seemed to be night. Suddenly, he was dropped on the floor. Face groaned. But that was just the beginning; out of the blue fists started to punch him and he was kicked by many feet. He curled up in order to protect him from the beating. After an eternity, to Face it seemed even longer, they stopped. His whole body ached, so he could barely move.

 

A hand was run softly through his blond hair. He heard a low female voice, then his blind fold was removed. Now, Face was looking at a pretty Asian soldier smiling friendly at him. “Oh, hello ; if I´d known that I´ll meet you today, I would have dressed up”, he tried to flirt, but the woman gave him a confused look.   
“Never mind.”  
He smiled at her winningly.  
Out of the blue, she bent in for a kiss. Her soft lips touched his mouth….  
“Why couldn´t all the soldiers be that nice”, Face thought, after all he was a follower of the “make love not war “idea , but unfortunately the Vietcong had a different motto.  
Suddenly, he saw a flash of light reflected from a blade in the semidarkness, which made him instinctively flinch away from her.

 

The woman shook her head and tried to calm him, pointing at the robs around his wrists and angles. She wanted to free him ? He gave her a skeptical look.  
In a gesture, she put a finger on her mouth. Be quiet ? Face gave her a questioning look.  
From outside , they could hear some male voices calling and engines being started.

 

A single voice yelled an order. The woman hurried to cut through the robs and shouted an answer in her mother tongue. After gesturing him to be quiet and stay where he was, she ran out of the cabin. Face could hear the engine sound getting lower in the distance . They flew.

 

Before he left the cabin, he waited for a while listening in order to make sure , that they were really gone. Slowly he got up. The Lieutenant had to find out whether his teammates were still alive. A lamp was hanging from the ceiling, which Face took off and lighted it with some matchsticks he found on a cupboard.

 

The place between the cabins, filled with dead bodies, was a horrible sight. As far as he could see, they all had gun shoot wounds. Face was thankful for the darkness and the dime candle light so he didn´t have to have a closer look at them. He disgustedly climbed over them.

 

He reached a cabin and dragged the curtain, which was there instead of a door….empty and so were the other three ones. But then he was lucky to find Hannibal inside the fourth cabin.  
He was tied to a chair, sleeping or at least pretending to be.   
“Colonel, it´s me Face !”  
His eyes opened at once. “Is the coast clear ?”, he whispered.  
Face nodded. “They are gone, but unfortunately our vehicles, too. I don´t know how to get us some new ones out here.”  
He spotted Murdock lieing curled up in a corner with his uniform in rages.  
“What the matter with him ?”  
Hannibal shoke his head, not now.  
After Face had freed Hannibal and Murdock , who was unusually silent, they found B.A. tied up and blind fold in another cabin.   
Outside it was dawning.

Outside it was dawning. In the morning sunrise, the bodies, now crawling with flies and the first maggots starting to feed on them, were an even more horrible sight. Anderson was among the dead women and children. Face watched Hannibal wrinkel his nose in disgust, then putting a hand over it.  
“Let´s go, men, here´s nothing left to do for us.”

 

B.A. gave Hannibal a surprised look. “Hey man, why didn´t ya tell me what happened to poor Murdock ? I´d killed that suckers who did that to him !”

 

Hannibal looked to the floor. “I just tried to forget it, but sure Murdock couldn´t. After a rescue party had found us, he was taken to the hospital in our camp. I asked the doctors about his condition, but never really got an answer.

Then I was told that he was physically fit again but wouldn´t be able to go on duty, if he wouldn´t recover from trauma soon. They let me visit him, but the person I saw wasn´t Murdock anymore. He behaved like a small child, playing with toys, painting pictures with crayon and all the time he was mumbling to himself or talking to people or things which weren´t there at all.

 

The doctors mentioned something about regression, that he tried to cope with the situation by becoming a child again. After two month, he was well enough to fly us to our Hanoi-mission, but he had changed somehow. When he was back home, he had a nervous breakdown.

 

I was told that he was standing on the roof of a building, screaming that he could fly like a bird, people were afraid that he might jump, that´s why he was taken to the V.A. Since that day, he´s like we all know him now,” Hannibal closed.

 

Something he never talked about were his feelings to have let Murdock down on that day in the jungle. He was his commanding officer and supposed to protect him. He should have sensed the trap, he hadn´t been careful enough, this he could never forgive himself.  
But could one really protect someone in a war ?

Susan swallowed hard. “Thank you for telling me this, I think, I understand now.”  
She had a look at her watch. “My break has ended thirty minutes ago.” Hannibal nodded. “Please visit us anytime, Murdock´s friends are friends of the A-team as well.”  
In thoughts , she got out of the van. Susan was feeling sorry for Murdock, who´d been through a lot. She would take good care of him.

Hannibal sight, nothing of this had ever happened to Murdock, himself or the team. He had to create this war story, because he couldn´t risk this nurse to question Murdock´s trauma or mental disease. That would endanger the whole team. Murdock was indeed simulating, but only he knew .

The end


End file.
